Amazon Defends Pedophile Book

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by NetCat99

Do you guys honestly believe sex offenders stop raping just because there are less porn and less how-to books on the matter?

You are raving mad to think banning books stop any crime!!
Some people would still do terrible things without books and video games!!

Dude, I agree with the content of your message-- but can't you say it in plain text without making it look like a Geocities page from 1996?

[TGS]

Originally Posted by NetCat99

Hypocrisy
All men are pedophiles at the level of our instincts.
You believe our ancestors actually waited until they turn 20 before they start procrastinating?

We only pretend that we don't like girls younger than 20 because our society's ethical standards require us to behave that way.

This is a very brave post - though I am not sure I entirely agree with it I do sometimes get the sense that those who shout loudest about about this issue are the ones who are most at pains to not front up to their own thoughts and fantasies.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tammycravit

And, to agree with and extend your point, one of the functions of the law is to protect the rights of unpopular or disfavored minorities from "the tyranny of the majority". That is, part of the function of the law (and of a Constitution/Charter of Rights & Freedoms/etc.) is to ensure that mob rule cannot vitiate the rights of a member of a minority. And here, in this thread, we see exactly why the law is concerned with such things.

Exactly and particularly in a REPUBLIC which is what the U.S.A is contrary to some citizen's understanding.

[tiniree]

Originally Posted by tammycravit

And, to agree with and extend your point, one of the functions of the law is to protect the rights of unpopular or disfavored minorities from "the tyranny of the majority". That is, part of the function of the law (and of a Constitution/Charter of Rights & Freedoms/etc.) is to ensure that mob rule cannot vitiate the rights of a member of a minority. And here, in this thread, we see exactly why the law is concerned with such things.

And you would put such people as pedophiles in the same category as "unpopular or disfavored minorities"????

And kennyc: I understand when you say "YOU do not get to decide!" But don't we really? We elect these people upholding our laws, we vote to make these laws, and we decide as a people, how we want our society to be.

So which is it? Let the inmates take over just so we can say "we didn't hurt their feelings by telling them "NO, you can't do this in our society!"

When did the human population become a bunch of woosie's?"
When did we decide we were better off turning our heads and closing our eyes to what we know is wrong, just for the sake of not "hurting someones feelings"????

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by recluse

The Will of the People has spoken.
Child molestors and their advocates must be wiped out.

The Law must change.

That is the Will of the People.

See here's the problem Recluse. There are laws that cover this very well. They are already in place. They don't typically include the death penalty as you and some others here seem to want. If that really is the 'will of the people' (which I abhorrently disbelieve) then those that seek this change should be contacting their government representatives in order get this change before the people for an actual vote.

Now the caterwauling and yelling about this that happened over the last few days got a result, Amazon decided to remove this particular book from it's catalog (yet many others on the same topic are still there). This action is an action of commerce and has nothing to do with the law. The author and Amazon were both fully within their rights to offer this book to the public and may again in the future.

The first amendment guarantees the freedom of the press. That is at the core of this entire issue. If you (and others) wish to change that amendment you are welcome to try by following the processes already in place as part of our government, but you do so at your own peril.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tiniree

...

And kennyc: I understand when you say "YOU do not get to decide!" But don't we really? We elect these people upholding our laws, we vote to make these laws, and we decide as a people, how we want our society to be.

....

YOU as an individual do not get to decide. You as a citizen have rights (just as does the author of the book under discussion and just as Amazon as a corporate citizen) and one of those rights is to participate in the legislative process and to vote. Now if new legislation is brought to a vote, then yes, you get your vote. If that legislation should pass then it will be signed into law up to and including amendments to the Constitution. But no, you personally do not get to decide what can and cannot be published or offered for sale other than for items you yourself create, publish, or offer for sale.

[tammycravit]

Originally Posted by tiniree

And you would put such people as pedophiles in the same category as "unpopular or disfavored minorities"????

unpopular (adj.) not popular; viewed or received unfavorably by the public

disfavor (v.) to withhold or withdraw favor from

minority (n.) [3a] a part of a population differing from others in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment

A pedophile is (as this thread shows quite clearly) "viewed or received unfavorably by the public". Most of the rest of us "withhold favor from" pedophiles, and they are a part of the population differing from others based upon their sexual desire for children and subjected to different treatment than those who are not pedophiles.

So, how is a pedophile not an example of an unpopular or disfavored minority? They're simply more unpopular and more disfavored than most other groups. Which, by the way, is not at all unreasonable in my view, having been sexually assaulted at knifepoint when I was a kid by a member of that group. I'm just saying that, from a Constitutional standpoint, one of the foundational purposes of the Constitution is to safeguard the rights of minorities, even disfavored ones, from the mob rule of the majority.

Or, as the United States Supreme Court put it in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943):

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

[JLeighs]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And this is EXACTLY where democracy and Rule of Law comes in. YOU do not get to decide, the law and will of the people does.

I don't recall saying that I get to decide the rules. I do, however, get to decide for myself how I feel about the matter. And I have.

Of course it's relevant. And as I've said repeatedly in this discussion saying something is not the same as doing something. If the author were guilty and there was evidence then he would (and will) be arrested and charged with a crime.

As I've mentioned earlier, all I need to know is that a pedophile* wrote a book giving tips on the best ways to assault those who cannot protect themselves. That really IS all I personally need to know. Your needs may differ.

Writing and publishing a book is not a crime, thank goodness.

Yes, unfortunately, it's not a crime to publish a book for pedophiles describing condom substitutes for young boys who are too small to fit into regular ones. More's the pity.

*Asked if he had engaged in sexual acts with children as an adult, Greaves first answered “could have,” before stating flatly that he had not engaged in such illegal conduct. Source

Pardon me, but my personal initial response to such a question would have been a very emphatic "NO!". I don't buy his later protestations of innocence. But once again, at the end of the day, the guy wrote a guide for pedophiles. That's enough for me.

[recluse]

A matter of commerce.

Yes.

Follow the money.

How much does child pornography generate?

Check out who The International Pedophile Liberation Front openly supports.

The only peril is continuing to allow the morally compromised to dictate to the People.

Majority Rules. And the Change finally comes.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'm seeing two positions here:

1) Books should not be interfered with unless they're really disgusting.

2) Books should not be interfered with, because rights are more important than disgust.

Strip away all the emotional baggage, and that's really what the positions come down to. The fact that children are involved increases the disgust level; it doesn't move it from non-disgusting to disgusting).

There is the fundamental problem: how disgusting does a book have to be before people move from category 2 (not for me) to category 1 (not for anyone)?

Some people have tried to load the people advocating category 2 with highly negative images: those people (me included) favor pedophilia, don't care if children are raped, have no empathy, etc. I believe that's highly untrue. I don't think the people who think that are any less disgusted by the book. From where I sit, it seems some people are thinking that the book is so awful that it fits into a special category, and even free-speech advocates should understand that.

The problem is, from our point of view, it doesn't. It's on a continuum of undesirable things. I haven't seen anyone here deny that it's a horrible book. What concerns the free-speech advocates is who gets to choose what is too horrible.

WW, I was going to walk away from this thread, but came back and saw this and want to answer this, because i respect you and enjoy your posts.

I'm a Free Speech Rights advocate, too. Big time! I'm a libertarian, hang with the EFF crowd, and no one is more against government interference than we are.

But I'm not calling for anyone's rights to be abridged. No one has a First Amendment right to sell a book at Amazon.

Yet for every complaint about "emotional appeals" from the "anti-Amazon selling the pedophilia book" side, there are emotional appeals in the form of "freedom of speech" from the "anti-Amazon removing it" side.

It makes the discussion a muddy mess, because the apples aren't being sorted from the oranges, and people are rebutting one with another. Essentially straw-manning the arguments they don't want to face by brushing them off as anti-first amendment.

To me, this is about Free Speech and Free Market, and letting businesses listen and do what makes their customers happiest and serves them all best.

It's no different from a business that stops letting people smoke, its customers pitch a fit, and so it says, ok, smoking is allowed.

Don't those customers have a right to free speech and free association? But they're being bashed for exercising them.



On the subject of my posts, it's wrong for my argument to be repeatedly oversimplified and misrepresented to "oh, it's too offensive to me, so ban it."

First, define ban. I've said repeatedly, I don't want government touching this.

Second, I gave a reasoned arguments and other variables that make this different from all the books being tossed out as the next victims.

I understand some won't agree.

But as I said, the proof is in the pudding: The uniquely overwhelmingly united reaction of Americans, and the response by Amazon.

But for those who fear it's no different from other highly offensive books, I will propose this challenge:

If any of the books everyone is spreading FUD about being "next" ever get removed by Amazon, well... name the bet!

It's just not going to happen.

I promise you, not only are Lolita, Mein Kampf, the Bible, Koran, Diary of Anne Frank, Harry Potter, and all the others perfectly safe, but even books like the Anarchist's cookbook.

And that's because the masses and amazon have demonstrated by their actions that they can see the line. If any of those other books were threatened, too many of us would fighting for keeping them.

The only scary ones, to me, are all these people who can't see that line and think there really is a logical step from this book to those.

And the only people demonstrating that failure of discernment are those who don't think Amazon should have removed this book.

Anyway - the bet is open - if anyone wants to take a gamble on who's right, we'll work something out. (not money - i think that's illegal. )


(no time to edit before I go, so forgive the length and errors.)

[kennyc]

Just to follow up on one of the subthemes here....I realize these are both in the U.K. but be careful what you say on line:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...d-2131625.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...d-2131892.html

[Alexander Turcic]

Moderator Notice
Regarding some of the earlier postings... way too much sniping going on here. Please keep the personal, inflammatory and off-topic stuff out of here if you don't want us to put this thread on "ice" for a while.

Future snarky comments will get special attention. Please keep that in mind if you want to continue participating in this discussion. If you don't, feel free to put this thread on ignore.

Thank you for your consideration.

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[crich70]

I've read over some of the postings on this topic and two things occur to me. First there is the fact that our modern sense of outrage at the topic is only a little over 100 yrs old. Prior to the late 1880's there weren't any laws against adult/child sex. Mind I do think that it's good we have the laws, but til comparatively recently (if you think about it) such actions weren't legally (at least) a crime. Secondly, I'm reminded of a story I read once (I think it was in Stephen King's Dance Macabre) where he spoke of a case of someone wanting a book banned from the high school library. The woman's son had checked it out to read for a book report as I recall, and she happened to read some of it. Turned out there was a lot of objectionable language in it (its setting was the steel working industry) and it offended her. So she set out to get it removed from the stacks. Before her son had checked it out no one else had as yet done so, but by the time the school board got around to making the decision to remove said book about 50 or so other people had checked it out. The more of a spotlight a book that someone wants banned gets the more people pay attention to it and want to know what the big 'fuss' is. I agree this is probably a book that shouldn't be published, but Amazon isn't the only avenue for the author to get it out there either, and someone, somewhere will still search for it out on the web. I mean some people did buy the kindle version I understand, and though it probably has the usual DRM protections on it I'd wager that someone, somewhere will (if they haven't already) break it and upload it as a mobi or a text file or something. The more a thing is forbidden, and the harder it is to aquire, the more some people will want to get it.

[kennyc]

It's already there crich70.

[SameOldStory]

What a mess. When I first saw this, I thought of posting a comment or two. But decided not to. For one, any subject relating to a moral judgment attracts trolls.


So what do we have here?

* Freedom of speech -
- - You don't have to like what people are saying, but they do have the right to say it (print it, etc). So long as your not saying it about a protected group. At that point you can loose your all your money, if not your liberty too.

* Business self preservation -
- - Amazon, like most businesses, want to stay in business and make money. Dropping this book is, probably, more in the way of good business sense than censorship.

* Child protection -
- - I see very little of that in society. Oh there are laws, but they're for prosecuting after the fact. They don't do much protecting.


Freedom of speech. Interesting. You can't stand up in a theater and shout FIRE. Someone could get hurt. A person can, however, write a book on the safest way (for the pedophile) to have sexual relations with a child.

I may be wrong but I think he's supposed to have warned against penetration. Some legal distinction? Would penetration of a child be considered (legally) hurting someone, whereas doing the other things he advocates "not" hurt the child?


Some will say that all censorship is, ultimately, bad. Slippery slope, and all that stuff. For the most part I tend to agree. The problem comes in when people insist that it's always bad.

Lets change to alcohol. For some it really is bad all the time, as in people on dialysis. Yet red wine ranks very high on the good list, in moderation. So. Is the freedom to drink, like free speech, always right? If someone has a bad liver and wants to drink, fine. Help yourself. But restricting the freedom of children to drink as much as they want is, I think, better for society as a whole. Some wine with the family at meal time, on the other hand, is quite acceptable in some areas of the world. It probably would have kept me from finishing every bottle that I opened when I was younger.


When people insist on everything being one way or another - black or white - you have great piles of manure piling up at each end of the bell curve.

There is no perfection. Somehow we have to come up with solutions that we can live with. And it will restrict the rights of some people. Even if the pedophile really really wants that job in the daycare center, his rights must be restricted.


Interesting.

Originally Posted by kennyc

From 9News this morning:

http://www.9news.com/news/article.as...3034&catid=339

"Police say that threats have been made against Greaves and that they are keeping an eye on him to protect him."

And yet, there is no way they can protect the children.

Originally Posted by JLeighs

Yes. I'm not really sure why a self-described pedophile who writes a book teaching other pedophiles how to "properly" assault children should have any rights at all in our society.

Originally Posted by kennyc

The reason is because all citizens have equal rights under the constitution.

In addition there is no evidence that the author is actually a pedophile, but was a child "victim" of pedophilia from what I understand.

You can't prove a negative. All we know for sure is that he hasen't been arrested or convicted of pedophilia.

Google - sex capitals of the world

Has anyone checked to see if he travels to SE Asia, or even Mexico, a lot? Rhetorical question.